


memory is the beginning of redemption

by Trekkele



Series: VaYehi [3]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Antisemitism, Gen, Genocide, Jewish James T. Kirk, Murder, Tarsus IV, and genocide, complicated relationships with faith, vague mentions of starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 21:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trekkele/pseuds/Trekkele
Summary: Remember, they say, or history is doomed to repeat itself.Remember, they say, for in memory lies redemption.Yours.Jim remembers, throughout his life, and somedays he wishes he didn't. Of course, that's not how the world works, and memories are what build us in the end.





	memory is the beginning of redemption

**Author's Note:**

> decided to organize these fics in a series. Please pay attention to the tags, and also let me know if you think I missed an important one.
> 
> This subject is a little personal, so i guess be kind?
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely and talented PrairieDawn, who is a gift to fandom at large.

He is six years old the first time he dreams of exploding stars.

 

They are dying, shedding nebulae beneath his feet, and he does not hate them yet. Does not know that every time they scream, the echoes he hears aren’t echoes at all.

 

He keeps dreaming, not every night, but enough, of stars that scream and burn and bury the universe around them even as he watches, content in the knowledge that is just a dream.

He keeps dreaming until the dreams become nightmares, until he recognizes them and sees their faces in the night sky. He hates them, then, the stars, the sun, anything that dares to shine so bright that the world forgets how dangerous they are. 

 

(It’s years later that someone calls him a star and all he can do is smile, half burning, imagining all that surrounds him collapsing into the black hole he thinks he is.

It’s years till he realizes how much you can love a dangerous thing.)

 

He tells his mother that first morning, when the dream was just a dream and not a memory. Winona is singing into the pancake batter, because for once they followed her exact instructions, and the new ship down in the yard she never calls by name is going to be ready right on schedule.

 

“I had a dream last night.” Chocolate syrup drips down his chin, warm from laying over pancakes and sweeter than real chocolate ever could be.

 

Winona says nothing, just hums another tune older than the house they live in, and invites him to continue as she flips another cake into the plate on the counter, probably hoping to drag Sam out of bed by the smell alone.

 

“Yeah,” he says, around another bite, six and still convinced dreams mean something. “Stars kept exploding, and if I kicked my feet they changed colors too.”

 

Winona froze, half turned away from the old stove, a spoon of batter dripping into the bowl. “Is that so,” she doesn't’ react, not really, voice between amused and horrified because she’s seen stars explode. She knows exactly what he means.

 

“Yeah, and you were there too!” He is suddenly sure of this, sure that his mother held him tight as the universe ripped itself apart around them.

 

He is six, and the universe dies violently in his dreams, and he doesn’t know why. Not yet.

 

* * *

 

He is eight the first time he dreams of death, sliding heavy up his lungs and his throat and dripping rotten over his teeth.

 

“History must be remembered,” His teachers say, echoing over their heads, young enough to understand and old enough to question, and he wonders why it feels like they always look at him.

 

There are books, in every classroom, in every corner, about peace. About exploration, about science, about the importance of holding hands when you run so that others do not fall behind.

 

They visit New York one summer, and the guest house the Rabbi offers them has been in use since before the Eugenics Wars.

 

There is a public kitchen down the street, there is a girl in the park who invites him to play, there is kindness, despite every brick they needed to rebuild.

 

He does not understand this hate, this history they must remember, and he does not want to.

 

(It is years later that he does, and he wonders at himself, learning about death with an awareness buried in his bones he does not yet understand and he can only laugh.

Maybe he regrets that naivete, maybe he misses it, but he does understand this:)

 

Kindness is not born of innocence. It is not naive, or childish, and every kindness he’s ever known was built in blood, dug up from the rubble hate leaves behind again and again, because to let hate bury you is to  _ lose _ .

 

There is a knowing, buried deep in his bones, wrapped around him, and he is eight the first time he dreams of exploding stars and thinks of death. 

 

The universe is greater then he imagined, and they say that the death of a single yellow star is not a tragedy.

 

He is eight when he understands that they are wrong, and it is.

 

* * *

 

He is twenty seven, and he is dead, and he dreams of genocide.

 

Except he is not, because dead men do not dream. So he is twenty seven, and only mostly dead, dreaming of when he was fourteen, because he is in Riverside. He hasn't been there in almost seven years. He knows he has already lived this memory once.

  
  


So he continues wrapping the dream leather around his arms, and continues ignoring Sam as he kicks his legs over the side of his bed.

 

Sam can ask him things he wouldn’t forgive in anyone else, even now, because Sam never asks him anything.

Except when he does, and it’s never just a question.

 

“Do you still believe?” he asks, feet hanging motionless over the side, leaning his head on his hands.

He remembers wondering how long Sam had been staring, padd laid down beside him. 

 

He doesn’t answer, still winding the ritzu’ot around and around, remembering the first few months where the straps were always, no matter what he did, too loose.

 

He told himself it had nothing to do with hunger, and it was just because he was younger than his uncle had been.

 

He tells himself a lot of different things.

Sometimes he even believes them.

 

Sam isn't waiting for an answer. It’s not that he doesn't want one, it's that he doesn't expect one. Jm supposes that’s why he’s always done his best to answer anyways.

 

He tucks the tefillin back away into the velvet bag, one that isn't covered in dry blood, but sometimes feels sticky beneath his fingertips, and thinks.

 

He doesn't owe anyone answers, not even G-d. But he has them, so he gives them.

 

He is not used to having answers.

 

“It has nothing to do with believing,” he says, finally facing Sam, turning his back to the window. “Uncle Thom was teaching me when he died,”  _ when he was murdered _ , “and he died wearing them,”  _ died because of them _ , “it’s something I can do, to remember him.

He put them on every day. No matter what else was going on, he kept putting them on, every morning.” 

 

Sam doesn’t speak, just nods, hopping off Jim’s bed and standing before him. “Show me,” he holds his arm out, rolling up his sleeve. “I’m out of practice.”

 

So he does, and when they’re done, he finds another answer, one he isn’t sure he can accept yet.

 

“If I have to choose between nothing having meaning, a purpose, or that  _ everything  _ does,” he says softly, allowing Sam to lean on his shoulder, “than maybe choosing to believe in a G-d, however much I may not forgive them, is the simpler choice.”

 

“You’ve never done anything because it was easy, Jim,” Sam teases, barely a whisper, “You’ll have me believe you’re starting now?”

And he has to laugh at that, because Sam never really asks a question, but he does dig at his soul, pretending he wants a simple answer.

 

“I never said it was easy. Believing isn't easy,” he says, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

 

Sam joins him, the next morning, because sometimes belief has nothing to do with it, and sometimes it’s all you can do.

 

He is twenty-seven, dreaming of genocide. It is not the first time.

It will not be the last.

 

Sam fades, and he is watching a red sunset over the mountains, Alsin stepping into place beside him.

 

Her skin is blue again, and he doesn't want to remember the blood that stained it pink no matter how hard he tried.

He doesn’t want to remember the bullets that broke bones open, but he is StarFleet, now, and one thing they’ve never done is run from the truth.

 

Maybe he never did either.

 

“You’re dead.” Uhura would frown, scolding him for his lack of diplomacy, but he thinks dreaming of dead memories should excuse him from being tactful.

 

“You are not.” she says, and it is meant to be a reassurance. He doesn’t know if it is, anymore.

“Despite your best efforts, of course,” she continues, and it is a teasing sort of criticism, an almost request, from the dead.

 

“What, don't you want to see me?” he asks, pushing the line and wondering if it will break.

 

It pushes back, instead.

 

“I’ll see you when you are ready, James Tiberius Kirk, and not a moment sooner.” he never told her his full name. It was a game they played, what JT stood for, and he hadn’t lost till she died.

He doesn’t think Alsin lived long enough to hear him whisper it.

 

“I know what I did. What I risked. Are you telling me I wasn’t ready to die for my crew?”  _ for you _ ? He’s angry. Even in sleep they can’t let him dream,  _ remember _ , in peace anymore.

 

Alsin faces him, ignoring the brilliant sky above her head.

 

“Being willing to do what’s necessary, JT, and being ready, are two very different things. You know that.”

 

“Besides,” a new voice calls from behind him. Tommy grabs his shoulders, turning him to face the mountains again. “Are you really telling us you’re ready to give up this view?” he waves a hand, and suddenly the Campus is before them, the Enterprise hanging low, orbiting another earth.

 

One with two moons, and a violent purple sky.

 

“You aren’t dead,” he says, ignoring the impossible for the man standing beside him. Alsin laughs.

 

“Well, it’s your dream, mate.” Tommy grins, “I don’t need to be  _ dead  _ to show up if you want me to!”

 

He opens his eyes, and remembers, how it felt to be an exploding star, falling and falling and falling.

 

Alsin is dead, and he remembers her, because that’s all he can do now. But Tommy’s face lights up when he calls him, later that week, and Jim never does tell him why he did.

 

It’s enough that he did.

 

* * *

 

 

This one isn’t a memory, or a dream.

 

He is almost thirty when StarFleet sends him home.

Because they are StarFleet and they do not run from the truth, not anymore.

 

It is an odd thing, now, to call it home, but he left too much behind on Tarsus to call it anything else. The name is ash in his mouth, and he can only curl his tongue around it for so long before he gags.

 

StarFleet can’t give him any real answers, nothing more than a vague explanation and the expectation that he will put himself aside for the mission, as he has always done. 

 

He never did ask Sam why he thought belief was a choice.

He does not plan on vid-comming his mother, not till the mission is over and he can pretend it’s classified, despite her clearance level being higher than his, but it’s Thursday. Barring Klingons and\or the heat death of the universe Winona always comms on Thursday.

 

She calls, and looks at him, silent for a moment, before launching into a story involving junior engineers, a comm malfunction, and a bowl of pudding.

 

It should have had him breathless, laughing, because no matter the crew junior engineers have a talent for the ridiculous. Instead his mother stops, halfway through, and sighs.

 

“Do you want me to ask?” She knows what he is, what he does, how the captaincy weighs sometimes (all the time), and so she asks, first. Always.

 

“Do you think I should tell them?” he answers, a question with a question, something his grandfather would call a family tradition.

 

He died before Jim ever left earth, the first time.

 

“I think,” Winona says, knowing exactly what he meant, “that you’re asking the wrong question.”

 

He loves her, he does, but sometimes he wishes they weren’t quite so alike.

“Oh?” he raises an eyebrow, more a challenge then a question this time.

 

“You don’t want to know if you should tell them. You want to know if I think it will matter, when you do.” she cuts him off, although he hasn’t even begun to speak. “You want to know if it will change anything, in the way they see you. The way they follow you.”

 

There’s a pause there, between all the things they haven’t said to each other but that they’ve understood.

 

Like exploding stars, lightyears apart.

 

“No”, she answers, the question he asked and the one he didn’t. “I don't think it will matter.”

 

“To them,” she adds. “To you it does, and that’s alright.”

 

And he wonders why Sam thought believing was ever a choice, when despite everything, he is given reason to believe.

 

“We don’t give flowers to the dead.”

 

His grandfather told him this, the first time Jim convinced him to take him to see his father.

 

Jim noticed other people leaving roses, leaving bright flowers behind when they said their goodbyes.Tugging at his grandfather's sleeve he pointed out to him that they had come empty handed, no offerings or apologies bundled up in bright bouquets. 

 

“We don’t give flowers to the dead, Jimmy.” his grandfather bent down, picking a pebble from between the grass at the side of the path and opening Jim’s hand, placing it at the center of his palm.

“You leave this.”

Jim stared, at the little brown stone in his hand, at the white pillar where his fathers name was carved, at the lines on his grandfather's face.

 

“A  _ rock _ ?” he asked. At least the flowers would have looked pretty.

 

“Flowers die, Jimmy. They look pretty, but chances are the next person to visit will have to clean them up, and no one but the living really enjoys them.” he picks up another stone, and places it carefully between the cracks of the StarFleet symbol in the white marble.

“But a rock? That little pebble won’t rot, or fall apart. It’s a reminder, too, a sign that this person is remembered and visited and loved. Maybe someone passing will notice, and take a minute to visit him too.”

 

Jimmy frowned at the little brown stone in his hand, but his grandfather wasn’t done. 

“Some people say it’s an invitation, you know.” Grandpa Jamie smiled at him, at the way he was suddenly much more interested in the stone he’d given him. “Like knocking on a door, asking them to come out and join you.”

 

But Jimmy tucked the stone in his pocket, pulling out a blue and green and white marble, his favorite from the collection he’d started last month. His interest wouldn’t last long, but he always kept marbles in his desk after that. Everything has its uses, after all. 

 

“If it’s an invitation, it should at least be a pretty one.” he said, missing the smile on his grandfather's face as he balanced the shiny toy on top of the marker.

 

He doesn't bring flowers, down to the planet. Someone does, and there’s a wreath leaning on the memorial at the center of the old town.

 

He can hear Grandpa Jamie muttering about wasting flowers on the dead, but he isn't here to visit the memorial, neat and tidy, a thousand names carved on each of it’s smooth sides.

 

He isn’t here to visit graves at all, he tells himself, jittery and drinking coffee because he needs to do  _ something _ , and building paper planes out of official reports is both frowned upon and impossible now that they’ve switched completely to padds.

  
  


He tells himself he isn’t here to visit graves, and the kippah, standard issue, tucked into his pocket alongside several replicated marbles is just a coincidence. 

The final pre-mission briefing is finished far too quickly, and if there are more volunteers then usual he does not show his surprise.

 

Everyone knows someone.

 

Everyone is determined to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible, with as much respect as they can muster.

 

They don’t think it’s strange, that he’s hardly given a single order in regards to the mission brief. They figure the ghosts are loud enough here that anyone can hear them.

 

They aren’t wrong.

 

The fields aren’t empty anymore, native blue corn swaying at knee height when he wanders away from the survey team, Spock and Sulu supervising and Uhura making sure everyone treats the planet with dignity and respect.

As if his crew would ever do otherwise.

 

It’s easy to find the old paths once he starts looking, the ones he knew were safe till, they weren’t.

He supposes they’re safe again.

 

There are the marbles, sliding around his back pocket, tucked in with the kippah he puts on in a fit of desperation, because as much as he remembers  _ here _ , he remembers fear.

 

And he does not want to remember fear.

 

[ _ May the lord answer you on a day of duress _ ], he mutters, hebrew rolling over his tongue, placing each foot carefully, hoping he really does remember the way correctly.

 

[ _ let us sing praises for your salvation _ ] and the irony does not escape him as he stumbles into the clearing, barely any trees between him and the fields that they once burnt in desperation, smoke hanging heavy as they ran.

 

He sees the first heap of native stones and tumbles to his knees, memories pressed into the still, all these years later, healing earth.

 

He sees the first grave of greying stone, time and rain and nature reclaiming it as their own, and tumbles to his knees, to a memory he thought he’d buried with the first bottle of whiskey he stole from the glass cabinet back in Riverside.

 

He remembers now that they could not afford to bury them, could not waste the time to dig, weak and starving and too tired to cry again.

 

His people are behind him, whispering out of respect and sorrow, and the ache he can't seem to find behind hollowed out ribs and a part of him he thought was buried hears their voices through the trees and screams,  _ run _ .

 

His people lay before him, silent and eyes buried and asking,  _ why did you come back. _

 

_ There is nothing for you here. _

 

Only Memories.

 

He should get up, he knows, but there are five behind him and five before him and the press of memories on his shoulders is as heavy as the weight of 523 crewmen.

 

Five to almost five hundred and yet it’s the weight of five forgotten, too small graves, that feels like it might break him.

 

He shouldn't be surprised that Uhura’s the one who finds him. They’ve known each other longer than anyone on board, although Bones insists that starting a bar fight together hardly counts.

Uhura insists that she had nothing to do with starting the fight anyways.

 

She settles on beside him, letting her tricorder rest on the soft blue grass.

“It feels like there are graves everywhere here.” He pulls the marbles from his pocket, rolling them gently around his palm.

 

She doesn’t know. None of them do.

 

_ Will they look at me differently _ , he wonders. He thinks, maybe knows, that they won’t, and he can’t bury himself beneath these stones out of fear. He can't bury the part of himself that exists,  _ here _ . On this planet. In these graves.

 

“Are those marbles?” she asks, twisting soft grass together into the vulcan word for peace. Leaning forward she places them onto S’Ha’k’s stones, and he freezes.

 

She notices, she always does, but she places it gently, and then picks another handful of grass, twisting them slowly.

 

He wishes peace were so simple as twisted blades of grass.

 

“My grandfather taught me that leaving a stone at someone’s grave is a sign of respect, and an invitation, for them to come join you when you visit. I always made sure to bring marbles, because I thought rocks and pebbles made a poor excuse for an invitation.”

Uhura is not stupid. She doesn’t need things handed to her, explained.

 

Bones is probably panicking, realizing that the house behind the hill is exactly like the one in the old holo he keeps on his desk.

 

“Where’s that,” he once asked, picking it up for a closer look, trying to make small talk between reports.

 

“A friend of the family, on some old border colony I’ll probably never see again,” he’d said, changing the subject.

Bones isn’t stupid either.

 

She doesn’t gasp, or give any outward indication of what she’s understood, but her hands dip as she briefly pauses her braiding.

 

“There is no path to get here.” she says, hands suddenly clumsy as she continues. 

 

She is wrong. There is a path, but maybe he is the only one here who can see it.

 

“Tell me about them,” she asks, almost a plea, and it’s ambiguous enough that he could tell her anything, about the marbles, clinking between his palms, or the graves his grandfather took him too.

 

But he knows what he wants to say. Knows that memories are only heavy when they are buried, when they are born alone.

 

He places the blue marble on Alsin’s grave, alongside a braided blessing for peace.

“Her name was Alsin, and she loved to sing.”

 

He does not notice when Bones joins them, only that at some point he did.

 

They are none of them very necessary on this mission, at least not in StarFleet’s eyes.

 

But there are graves everywhere on this planet, a memorial so large it is overgrown with blue grass, bending over bleached white bones and he can think of nothing so fitting for his people.

 

_ There is nothing for you here, but memory, _ ghosts whisper, and he agrees.

 

But a blood red sun sets over the mountains, and he remembers. For now,  _ here _ , that is enough.

 

He is eight the first time he dreams of genocide, hunted by memories not really his own.

They will be, soon.

 

“History must be remembered!” his teachers say, and he does not imagine the way the room stills.

 

Here’s what he does not say, in the silence;

 

Here’s what he wants to say, fourteen and twenty seven and almost thirty, still dreaming of death;

 

Some of us can’t forget.

**Author's Note:**

> The tehillim (psalm) Jim says towards the end is chapter 20, one of the only ones I ever learnt to say by heart. It's always been a favorite. Customs may vary, but the flower/rock thing is true. Many people leave little notes, or kvitlech, as well. Any other questions you can come yell at me on tumblr, or in the comments. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
